The product life cycle is the pathway of a product from the beginning of its birth to the last phase of its dead from sales revenue insight. The stages of the product life cycle are similar to these of humans. As time passes, the product moves from infancy, grow, and reach maturity. Eventually it will decline and die.

There are four stages in the product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. By plotting the revenue on the y-axis and the time on the x-axis, the product lifecycle curve is as in below.

When it comes to pharmaceutical products, the curve is a bit different.

There are three distinctive stages of the life cycle of a new drug:

• The early stage:  research and development stage; from the drug discovery up to its launch to the market.
• The middle stage: the period of time between its launch and the loss of market exclusivity.
• The late stage: the period after the loss of market exclusivity (when generics can enter the market).

we will explore the three stages in more details.

The early stage:

the early stage involves the following:

• The new drug is submitted to certain intensive clinical and pre-clinical tests.
• The company invests money without generating sales as the drug is not launched yet in the market.
• The company starts the pre-launch activities.

The middle stage:

During the middle stage, the drug is launched to the market, and the company start making profit. As soon as the product is introduced to the market, the company starts activities like creating awareness and informing current and potential customers on the product. Once it enters the growth stage, the goal is to achieve the largest possible share of the market and maximize turnover. when growth is no longer possible, the product matures and the company focuses on maintaining its market share. when the market share and profits start to decline, the company consolidate on the market segments gained and try to minimize the expenses .

The late stage:

when the patent expires, companies seek defensive strategies to combat generic competitors and retain market share.

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